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As they travel the province in search of your vote, Liberal leader Kathleen Wynne, PC leader Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath of the NDP are making sweeping promises about how they’ll spend your dough.

The differences between Hudak and Wynne’s plan couldn’t be more pronounced.

Wynne and her finance minister Charles Sousa made massive spending promises in their May 1 budget.

They hiked tobacco taxes, imposed an income tax on people with incomes more than $150,000 and promised a payroll tax on everyone to pay for an Ontario Pension Plan.

Hudak is counting on his Million Jobs plan to get him elected. He wants to get electricity prices under control, end corporate welfare and says he won’t hike taxes. And he doesn’t agree with Wynne’s pension plan.

I took the plans to three economists this week and asked them who’s on the right track.

I got a view from outside the province from Dr. Jack Mintz, of University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

He worked on the pension studies for the federal and provincial ministers of finance and says most Canadians are saving fairly well for retirement and it’s only single seniors who may run into problems.

He says this province was told not to go ahead with the pension plan.

“I know that the Ontario government was advised not to do a defined benefit plan because it would be very costly,” he told me. “You are forcing mandatory savings on people who don’t need it.”

He says studies shows no need to increase CPP either.

Higher taxes and a hike in the minimum wage will simply make this province more uncompetitive.

“I think people are living in Wonderland if they think you can just hike taxes on higher income people, who end up moving to where I am, or increase minimum wages or put in new labour regulations that make it harder for employers to operate,” he said.

It will just create more layoffs.

“There are other places around the world where you can get cheaper labour with less costly regulations — particularly in the U.S.,” he said. He pointed out states such as Michigan and Indiana have made major changes to their labour laws regarding unions forcing workers to pay dues.

“The problem is that all these places are offering labour at lower costs, so it’s not surprising you get companies like Unilever closing up and Heinz moving, because they can go down to the U.S. where there’s a larger market to sell their goods,” he said.

Unilever announced last week it would shut its plant in Brampton, throwing 280 people out of work.

As well, auto parts giant Magna International said this week it wouldn’t expand in Canada, citing this province’s high energy costs as the reason for that decision.

Economist Ian Lee of Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business says Hudak’s jobs plan is, “the way to go.

“We’re declining in productivity. We are declining in competitiveness. I would argue that Hudak’s plan is closer to where we should be going,” he told me.

He agrees with Mintz that there’s “no justification whatsoever” for the pension plan.

The facts speak for themselves, he said.

“Canada has the third lowest level of senior poverty in the OECD — the 34 wealthiest countries in the world” he said.

He called the pension plan, “pure, partisan electioneering. They’re promising us something we don’t need,” he said.

As for a hike in the minimum wage, it’s the last thing we need at a time when youth unemployment is so high.

Minimum wage workers are competing with new technology for jobs. When the minimum wage goes up, stores such as Home Depot will open up more self check-out counters.

“What Wynne is proposing to do is make minimum wage jobs more expensive,” he said.

“How will businesses respond? As they always do with everything? They’ll economize.”

Economist Mike Moffatt at the Ivey School of Business at Western University says he doesn’t see how Wynne will pay everything she says she wants to do.

“My concern is how are they going to pay for all those promises? The tax increases — the tobacco tax and the tax on high-income earners don’t really raise all that much revenue,” he said.

And he’s worried about the province’s mounting debt.

“If our debt keeps piling up, our credit rating is probably going to go down, which means lenders will want more interest for it, so those interest payments are going to start to crowd out things like education and healthcare spending and we’ll have to pay more taxes just to pay the interest on the debt,” he said.

The pension plan, he says, is best left to the feds.

“It’s a little problematic when done provincially because a lot of people during their lifetime move between povinces, so it makes it a bit difficult to administer,” he said.

So don’t take my word for it.

Listen to what the economists are saying about Wynne’s ludicrous budget.